feeble-mindedness, receive relatively less attention in the country than
in the city. This situation certainly hinders rural progress and adds to
the social burdens of rural communities. Any one familiar with the life
of a typical rural town will know of peculiarities of conduct and
strange attitudes of non-social persons which indicate mental
unsoundness. These abnormalities express themselves in various forms and
I happen to know of some New England communities that have been
hopelessly separated into two hostile parts as a result of the influence
of persons whose subsequent careers have proven that the originators of
the difficulties were socially irresponsible. One such case was a church
quarrel that finally had to receive a state-wide recognition because of
the serious situation that finally resulted. The later suicide of the
individual, who first started the dispute, a suicide that had little
objective explanation, seems to have demonstrated that the whole
difficulty originated because of the influence of a psychopathic
character. In this case had the community known a very little about
mental aberration the history of the difficulty would have been very
different. Even as it was, a very few of the more thoughtful people
believed the man insane.
The chief reason, however, for mental hygiene propaganda in the country
is the influence it will have in preventing human suffering. The problem
of mind health is a humane one and this fact removes the distinction
between rural and urban need. Urban fields offer more inducements at
present for the worker, but the rural need is also great. The rural
districts are less conscious of their distress and perhaps respond less
readily to whatever instruction is given them, but they certainly must
be given the benefits of the mental hygiene movement by a patient and
persistent propaganda.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] "Insane and Feebleminded in Institutions," Washington, D. C., 1914,
pp. 50 and 54.
[4] "Mental Status of Rural School Children," by E. H. Mullan, Public
Health Reports, Nov. 17, 1916, and "The Mental Status of Rural School
Children of Porter County, Indiana," by T. Clark and W. L. Treadway,
Public Health Bulletin No. 77.
[5] Amentia is used as a technical term for feeble-mindedness.
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF RURAL EXPERIENCE
VI
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF RURAL EXPERIENCE
Our social ideas, the expression of what the psychologists define as the
social mind, are influenced too much by the thinking of urban people,
too little by that of people who live in the country and small villages.
There are many reasons for this undesirable social situation. One is the
outstanding fact that the city has the prestige that belongs to
political and commercial leadership. The urban leaders have for the most
part obtained their position by their possession of the means of control
of industries and of the channels of communication, or because of their
skill in winning public attention. They have become successful by
exercising capabilities that naturally give them social influence. They
are victors in contests that are decided largely upon the basis of
superior ability in manipulating men. Their advance has meant an
increasing opportunity to influence the thought of their fellows. In
many cases they have deliberately studied the methods of influencing
public opinion and have worked to obtain control of the modern equipment
necessary to direct it. One of the great engines for moving the public
mind is the newspaper and this is always in the hands of urban
leadership and a share of its power can usually be had by those who have
the necessary "pull" or cash.
Socially the successful farmer belongs to the opposite class. His
success has been obtained for the most part by his skill in handling
natural law. His struggle has been largely with the obstacles that arise
when one attempts to furnish a share of the food supply required by a
hungry world. The farmer's experience with the means of social influence
is limited and in his business there is no need of his impressing
himself upon his fellows. On the other hand it is natural that he
should overvalue the thinking of those who, unlike himself, have
developed the art of making social and political impression. This
tendency to discount his own social contribution in practice--even
though in theory he may often insist upon his paramount social
function--makes the farmer a good follower and a poor leader.
And yet in the nature of things there is nothing to demonstrate that
socially those who have the machinery that is required for the
influencing of public opinion or who have learned the art of impressing
themselves upon their fellows are the most fit to direct the social
mind. The struggle with Nature teaches as much that is of lasting value
for a philosophy of personal or national conduct as comes from
competition between people. Even if the population stimulus of urban
centers brings forth men of great ability who do large things, it by no
means follows that these men are wise merely because they are powerful.
And even if they were justified in claiming superiority at every point
over the successful men of the country, it would not be for the social
good that they be given a monopoly of social prestige.
Contact with men who occupy high places in city commerce will often
convince any one of a neutral and discriminating mind that these men of
social power have suffered loss at some points in their developing
personality as a result of the struggle that has made possible their
success. The present serious discord between capital and labor is
fundamentally born of the belief of some that wealth is as socially
right in all important matters as it is socially powerful and the faith
of others that the social problems that vex men and women would pass
with the destruction of wealth's artificial social advantages. Each
group confines itself to the territory of experience where everything
has to do with matters of human relationship, and each group insists
that only one point in that territory can have value as a position for
the observing and estimating of what happens there.
The extreme representatives of each group disclose that they have been
forced to a narrow view of human motives and interests by their
environmental experiences. They agree in their elevation of the power of
money to the supreme place socially--one defending the power as
belonging of right to wealth, the other regarding the social situation
as due to the unjust privileges of the few who prey upon the many.
The typical farmer is both a capitalist and a laborer and has a saner
attitude toward the difficulty than one can have who belongs exclusively
to either group. He is likely to accumulate his capital by slow savings,
which represent in some degree real sacrifice, and he cannot have
sympathy with those who refuse to credit capital with legitimate social
function. He also earns his bread by the sweat of his brow and has
therefore a first-hand knowledge of the burden of human toil. This
gives him an understanding of the discontent of exploited labor, but
also a deep contempt for those who have no interest in the work they do.
His thinking in regard to the differences between capital and labor is
born of experiences that are elemental in the human struggle for life
and comfort and therefore cannot be safely turned aside. His sympathies
swing toward one or the other of the conflicting groups according to his
most recent economic experiences. If he has been robbed by some
commission merchant, he joins the protest against the unjust power of
capital; if he has had a hired man who has worked indifferently and with
no respect for his vocation, he understands what is meant by the
unreasonable and impossible demands of labor.
The unchanging element in his thinking, however, comes from his personal
concern with reference to both capital and labor. In other words, he
lives closer to an earlier economic experience of man, when the present
great gulf between those who furnish capital and those who furnish
labor for industry had not been fixed. Neither the representatives of
the capital nor of the labor group, when they undertake what seem to him
extreme measures, can count upon his support.
The abiding fact that denies to urban thinking the right to enjoy a
monopoly of social influence is this: men cannot safely build up their
social thinking from experiences gathered merely from the field of human
association. Nature also has lessons to teach and lessons that do not
always agree with the inferences that are naturally made when one thinks
only of the experiences of men in their associations. It is socially
foolish and socially unsafe to disregard, or at least to forget, the
value of thinking that functions, as the farmer's does, in the effort to
control Nature for a livelihood that directly contributes to human
welfare. If such thinking is often prosaic and rigid, it is also close
to reality and insistent upon practicality. Narrow it may be at times,
as a result of lack of opportunity to have wide contact, but it is
substantial and born of knowledge of the necessary limitations that
Nature places upon the wishes of men and women. The farmer by his
vocation is taught to be suspicious of easy solutions. He stands aloof
from men who claim to have found the panacea and regards men of such
abounding enthusiasm as belonging to the same group of the pathetically
deluded as the believers in the machine of perpetual motion. The farmer
keeps the greatest distance from day dreaming and can never have charged
against him as a characteristic fault that menace of self-supporting
fancy which is so insidious in its attack upon the mental wholesomeness
of a multitude of people.
It becomes, therefore, as a result of a constant and clear-minded
attention to the actual working of forces of Nature that seem at times
friendly and at times hostile to man's purposes, difficult for the
farmer to regard money, even with all its recognized power, as able to
do everything, or the one thing to be desired. This does not mean, of
course, that the farmer is indifferent to money. No one who knows him at
all would claim that he is unconcerned in regard to finances. He is
always interested in money, and, like other men, works to make it. For
want of money he is often troubled. He knows how much money will do in
the sphere of human association. His everyday philosophy reveals this in
ways that one cannot mistake. He also knows, however, that even money
has its limits and that these are seen in man's relations with Nature.
How different it is in the experience of the city-dweller! He finds that
money will do nearly anything. With money he can have the fruits
gathered from the ends of the earth. Without money he is helpless. His
protection from disease, from vice, from countless forms of discomfort,
disrespect, and exploitation depends upon his ability to pay the
necessary rent for safe and pleasant surroundings. How much of
suffering, both physical and mental, the want of a "safe" income brings
to the urban-dweller one may discover by merely walking along the
crowded streets of any city. Without the necessary money he even fears
loss of a respectable funeral and burial place in case of death.
The urban wealthy keep close to more and more wonderful forms of luxury
by money. The urban poor keep out of the breadline by money. The
middle-class know that with a little more money they may expect to join
the first class and with a little less they may be forced into the
second. Money seems the one thing of power. Newspapers, street
discussions, and public opinion, for the most part, encourage the belief
in the omnipotence of money. Only in rare instances, as for example when
there is a death in the family, does the city person from his own
experience discover that money, which has so much of power among men,
cannot fully usurp Nature's control over the desires of men. Having so
often seen great natural obstacles overcome by bridges, tunnels, and
immense buildings, the urban person's final mental assumption is that,
given enough money, anything can be done. It is hardly strange that the
political philosophy which is distinctively urban should be built upon
the supreme value of money and the problem of its distribution.
With the present movement of the population toward urban centers, and
with the increasing ability of urban people through organization and
modern forms of communication to impress their ideas upon men and women
far and near, it is hardly strange that we should in our better moments
recoil from a materialism which seems to be creeping everywhere into
men's souls and producing interpretations of the purposes of life that
are false, dangerous, and sordid.
The antidote is a larger contribution to national thought and policy
from rural people. Talkers and men skilful in manipulating other men
have been taken too seriously. The doer, especially he who has
first-hand grapple with Nature in the contest she forever forces upon
men, has a word that should be spoken, a word of sanity. City people are
often too far distant from the realities of the primary struggle with
natural law to be entrusted with all the thinking. A visit a few months
ago to any city seed-store would have forced upon any critical observer
how ignorant city people are of the effort required to produce even
their most familiar foods.
Healthy national ideals require a contribution from both urban and rural
experience. The first we have in quantity. It is the second we lack. It
is the business of those who conserve social welfare to respect the
conclusions of rural thinkers and to discover how rural experience may
make its largest contribution to national policy and social opinion.
RURAL VS. URBAN ENVIRONMENT
VII
RURAL VS. URBAN ENVIRONMENT
We had just finished eating lunch at one of the more quiet hotels of our
greatest city. We lingered after the meal for a chat, this being one of
the privileges of the place, untroubled by the type of waiter, hungry
for tips, who so often at the metropolitan hotels conveys unmistakably
the idea that one's departure is expected to follow directly the
presentation of his bill. The host was a man of business, famed for his
success and his interest in public affairs, and especially generous in
giving of his money and time to further movements that attempt the
betterment of rural life. He had spent his youth in the open country and
had never lost any of the vividness of his first joys. It was this
mutual interest in rural problems that had brought host and guest
together for a quiet talk.
"Will you give me your deepest impression of the city as you came into
it from the country?" asked the man of business of the student.
"I hardly can claim one impression, there are so many."
"But one must be deeper or at least more consciously so than the others.
It is that I want. I'll tell you in return my strongest impression when
recently I visited, for the first time in several years, the farm where
I was born."
"I suppose the line of thought that captured my mind when I first came
into the city tonight is what you want."
"Yes."
"I began to think not of your noise or your hurry, your poverty or your
crowds, but of your atmosphere of what I call popular materialism. Do
you understand what I mean?"
"Perhaps not."
"I mean I sensed everywhere the emphasis upon the power of money. I
suppose it is an experience forced upon the consciousness of everyone
who comes into the life of this great city from a small community. It
seems as if the city was a monument to the idea that money can do
everything, that the getting of money is the only satisfactory purpose
of life."
"You must not forget the miser of the small village or the considerable
number of city people who do not make business and money-making the
chief object of their lives."
"Of course in justice I must remember what you say, for it is true. But
you wanted my vivid impression and I give it to you as the feeling that
in the city money seems all-powerful. With it you are able to get
everything, to do everything. You can command other men and they obey
you. You can reach over the ocean and draw luxuries of every kind to you
for your pleasure and your comfort. Wherever you go you are invited to
spend money. At least it is suggested to you how much you could have to
satisfy your wildest dreams, had you only the necessary bank account.
"On the other hand, without money you are like a lost soul in the midst
of Paradise. With a little money your life must be spent in miserable
tenements, in a dirty, noisy, unsanitary quarter of the city. Your
children, perchance, must become familiar with the neighboring
prostitute. Disease dogs your steps. Pleasures are few. More income
means not merely renting a better tenement, but also changing to a safer
and more pleasant neighborhood. And always facing you at every turn,
from every show window, even from the posters on the bill boards, are
suggestions of what money could do for you if only you had it."
"I see your point, but not for many years have I felt the truth of what
you say. I imagine I felt strongly the power of money when I first came
to the city. Of late I have taken the matter for granted and thought
little of it. Yet you must admit that money is power."
"Of course, but not to the degree the city deludes one into thinking.
Even in the city there is much money cannot do. In the smaller places,
especially in the country, one is impressed with the limitations of
money. In normal ways it is not possible to spend great sums of money in
the country. You do not find methods of getting rid of your money
attracting your attention at every turn. If great wealth is spent, a
plan must be worked out and some new enterprise undertaken--for example,
a magnificent residence or a fancy farm. In the city no forethought is
required to spend great wealth. The opportunity is ever at one's elbow.
The difficulty is not to accept the importunate invitations."
"I assume you blame the cities for the widespread materialism which is
charged up against modern life?"
"Not altogether. In the country, as you have suggested, we have lovers
of money and we have sordid poverty. But I do think that urban life
tends to emphasize money-getting and to keep it before the mind in a
way that is not natural in the small community. Because of this I regard
the cities as the natural strongholds of materialism and I see a danger
in the urbanizing movement of modern civilization. I think, therefore,
that men like yourself should do everything possible to keep in the
public consciousness the splendid idealism that is in the city. I mean
such kindly sacrifice as the settlement house. However, I have talked
enough. What is your vivid impression as a result of your visit to the
place of your boyhood?"
"Well, before I give you that, let me remind you that men like myself
get our power to help what you call idealism largely because of our
money. I suppose you hold, therefore, that even in our disinterested
service we advertise the power of money?"
"Yes, I must confess that your influence is never divorced from your
standing as one who has made good in the ways of trade. But what of
your country impression?"
"There is no place that still seems so beautiful to me as the place of
my childhood. I was born beside a splendid river; and not far from the
house, separated from it by stretches of meadowland, was a thick and
extensive forest. It seemed as if I had everything ideal for the play of
childhood.
"Upon my recent visit I felt as never before the value of what I like to
call the freedom of the spirit. It seems as if country environment
generously provides what the healthy-minded child most needs--an
opportunity for the free play of the fancy. I call it a spiritual
preparation for life, but I assume that the scientist would describe it
as an experience of the imagination. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, as far as you have gone. I covet, however, a clearer understanding
of what you mean."
"I mean what I used to find in Wordsworth's poetry and in the work of
our own Whittier. I never read them now, but years ago I did a little.
You were country-born yourself, as I remember. Don't you recall how your
imagination made rich with meaning the simple pleasures and sports of
your early life? I can well remember hours of fishing at a dark curve in
the river where the water was black even at noon-day because of the
overhanging trees. I think I never caught a fish there, but there was
always something about the place that made me think that some day a
wonderful catch would be made there. It was a place that enlivened the
fancy and it illustrates what I mean. There were many other such
breeding-spots for fancy scattered along the miles of river and woodland
which I grew to know so well."
"Don't you consider your play of fancy mentally dangerous?"
"No, not when it comes into the mind with the incoming tide of
experience. There was plenty of reality. We had our discomforts and our
disappointments. We were forced to take into account the causal order
of things. But the mind had a chance to add its part to the fact of
existence. And so it always needs to be. I have been successful as a man
of business in part because of my early use of the gift of imagination.
It is bad to have life all imagination, to carry into adult experiences
the make-believe of childhood, but it is a miserable and destitute
existence for any adult to bring to his work no imagination."
"And you regard your earlier use of imagination as a preparation for
your later use?"
"Indeed I do. I also regard it as the best basis for a reasonable
spiritual interpretation of life. In addition it furnished pleasures,
the memories of which are sweet and wholesome to this day."
"Do city children have no similar opportunity for creating fancy?"
"Perhaps they do, but their imagination is too quickly forced into the
hard forms of adult experience. They feel all too soon the meaning of
wealth, the punishments of poverty. They dream of more of this or less
of that. They covet possession of the things they see from the store
windows or in the yards of more fortunate children. The shadow of the
money-magic of which you spoke falls too soon for their later good
across their path. With the country boy and girl this is not likely to
happen. Their experiences are more buoyant, more interpretive, more
exploring. Fancy creates and reveals; it does not largely furnish the
false pleasures of fictitious possession. This is to me the difference.
The city may be the richest environment for the adult. That is a matter
of opinion. But I cannot see how anyone can think of it as the best
place for the child. I cannot believe that I would have gotten nearly so
much of good from my early experiences if I had lived in the city. If I
am right, this is another element to add to the great urban problem. If
the experience of the city child suffers spiritual privations from the
limitations of his environment, must this not show itself in social
tendencies? In any case I had a motive in what I have said. You are
interested in movements that attempt to enrich the experiences of
country boys and girls. That is good, but you must not occupy all of the
child's time or interest. Give him freedom to discover his own inner
resources, the spiritual union between his cravings and the richness of
nature. Don't exile him from nature's paradise by too much adult
supervision, organization, or influence. In my day we had too little
adult assistance in our games and recreation. I can imagine a condition
where the country childhood would suffer from too much."
It was this suggestion that I carried away with me from our
conversation.
THE MIND OF THE FARMER
VIII
THE MIND OF THE FARMER
In discussing the mind of the farmer, the difficulty is to find the
typical farmer's mind that north, south, east, and west will be accepted
as standard. In our science there is perhaps at present no place where
generalization needs to move with greater caution than in the statement
of the farmer's psychic characteristics. It is human to crave
simplicity, and we are never free from the danger of forcing concrete
facts into general statements that do violence to the opposing
obstacles.